Stranger
by chasingfireflies
Summary: Post 2x08. All with Aurora is not as it seems. They notice.


**Disclaimer: Imagine if I did own it though.**

**A/N. This is post 2x08 (_"Into The Deep"_), so spoilers up to that. Hints at either Sleeping Warrior or Sleeping Swan, if you squint. I have character fears. I apologise in advance. I really shouldn't have.**

* * *

Emma has always known that perception and family do not coincide.

Parents lie to their children, and siblings keep secrets, and friends are all about keeping confidence. Family keeps harmony through ignorance. Bliss. Seeing through it all – the social cues, the manners, the bonds and the years stacked up – to the quiet little things underneath, never spells out good things for the balance you seemingly so effortlessly maintain.

She's never been so trusting, really – particularly in issues with Hook's name attached – so she's not particularly surprised when she's the first to notice. It's in the little things – the things most people overlook or ignore, misled by their comfort and their familiarity. Emma's not used to either of those things, really, so they never get to lead her around. She relies on facts, specifics, body language and intonation. The things you _see_ rather than the things you _feel_.

Then again, if they're going on feeling, nothing about Aurora's reappearance _feels_ right.

It's not her fault the facts back her up. It's in her voice – the rhythm of her words, just a little out of time with how she used to be, intoned a little flatter than normal. Her smile, so sparing to begin with and around less these days. Her eyes, with that strained glaze, some ghostly hint of an inward struggle that Emma almost doubts she sees. Aurora's just a little bit more attentive when they're talking about Cora, or Henry, or Storybrooke – and just a little bit less for all the rest of the time. It's weird. It's _wrong_.

She doesn't want to believe it. Once, before Maine, before Henry, and Mary Margaret and Snow, Emma mightn't have cared so much. She used to cut her losses, no pause, no problem (except that one time on the way to Tallahassee). But things are different now.

Three days go without Aurora catching her cloak on a branch, or mentioning the inconveniences that living in the woods presents her, and finally Emma calls it. She'll be sad to see the calm go, the camaraderie. They're friends, now, for all they've been through – family, by its looser definitions – and Emma doesn't want to believe the worst. Always the bearer of bad news, with more to lose now than ever before. She drops back with Snow as they walk, puts some distance between them and their companions, chokes down the miserable little girl in her before she speaks.

"Snow," she says, quiet, cautionary. "There's something you should know about Aurora…"

Emma has always known that perception and family do not coincide. They only ever ruin each other. When it comes down to it, she chooses perception – it's served her better so far than family ever has.

/-\

Snow has learned a lot about caution over the years.

It's the reason she's doesn't disregard what Emma tells her – about the little things. The miniscule actions that catch Aurora out. The tiny little inconsistencies in the way she lives these days. Snow doesn't believe it, at first. But she's learned all about caution, so she doesn't ignore it, either. She watches – the same way Emma does, and always has – and then she starts noticing. The stiff tones and the stiff muscles and the stiff smiles. A tension underlying everything in Aurora, almost unnoticeable. Almost, but not entirely. And watching gives way to understanding.

Snow's never really known the whole process of stealing hearts. It's never truly interested her before, apart from a hope of avoiding it. But she remembers the huntsman sent to kill her who set her free instead, and his wary self-control. And Emma remembers Graham, on the other side of things, who remembered, and questioned, and died without a scratch for his trouble. They share a silent fear for Aurora's future, but the immediacy of the situation takes precedence.

A spy in their group. An unwilling blade in the dark. Aurora's not even in control of her own body. She would warn them, otherwise. Snow doesn't want to believe it. But she's learned better than to just push the bad things aside.

So they drop a few references to past conversations just to make sure – little things Aurora should know, but doesn't seem to remember. And Snow watches the girl's eyes – the way they move, take in everything and fix on nothing, a quiet storm to watch, a direct link to the shackled mind. And eventually Snow sighs out her defeat and tries to catch Mulan alone.

"Have you noticed anything off about Aurora lately?"

She tries the slow approach. If that doesn't work, nothing will. Snow is not likely to forget the stolen compass, stolen again for the sake of loyalty, the hand constantly on her sword pommel, the deceptively short fuse this woman possesses. Predictably, though, the conversation doesn't go well. In fact, it doesn't go at all. Mulan has a habit of shutting down where Aurora is involved these days. Snow thinks she sees the danger – maybe even noticed before Emma did. But where she and her daughter will accept it, grudging and reluctant to the end, Mulan simply won't. Steadfast to the core, that girl. Snow would admire it – _if_ it weren't so badly timed. She usually does.

"Plan B," she says to Emma before they make camp for the night, and it goes, mostly, without a hitch. Aurora is bound and tied to a tree before sundown, and Mulan only puts up half a fight. They can't kill the girl – she's lost her heart, but she's still family. But without control, they can't just let her roam. And they sit down and tell Mulan this – all of it, all of the history, the past experiences, the danger that Aurora presents. And she listens. And for a moment – for a long, long moment, before Emma knocks out for the night and Snow volunteers for first watch – she actually believes that this is going to be okay. They can figure it out. Save Aurora. Get home. She believes, and for a moment she relaxes.

Snow has learned a lot about caution over the years – but it's only when Mulan tosses a handful of sleeping powder in her face that she realises; she could stand to learn a little more.

/-\

Mulan has a certain creed; family, duty, honour.

She's never felt wrong about it. Her family whiled away, of course, as families do, with wars and curses, and as years passed. But she made friends to fill the gaps – Phillip, who she loved in a way, at one time, and now Aurora, her friend and her charge and everything she really _has_ in the world. Emma and Snow _matter_, and she doesn't want to kill them, she doesn't want them dead. But Aurora means more – has the stigma of dying promises attached, has more of a need. Aurora came first. And she does now, too.

Tying her up is wrong somehow – no matter what that voice in the back of her mind says about how these other worlders might just be right. She can't possibly have lost her heart – not when she has so much of it to give. Emma and Snow have perceived her as a threat and forgotten the friend that she has become to them. And Mulan knows she won't convince them, and she can't rectify this.

Family, duty, honour. Aurora's her family now. She has to protect that, first and foremost. So she pulls out her sleeping powder – made herself a little extra when they were putting Snow under – and shoves it in Snow's face, catches her when she falls and lowers her to the ground. Drops a little more of the dust around Emma where she's sleeping, just so she won't wake up too soon, and cuts Aurora loose.

She follows her greater loyalty, even if she feels a little ill for it, and leads Aurora away. And when they're far enough to rest, just for a little while, to still outrun Snow should she give chase in the morning, she stops, and starts a small fire, and looks at Aurora, closer than she should be and getting closer still, expressionless and tortured in her eyes, and smiles for the sake of comfort.

"It's okay," she says. "You'll be safe now."

Mulan has always had certain creed; family, duty, honour. But when she feels the blade slide underneath her armour and in between her ribs, she wonders if she was missing something all along.

/-\

Aurora often wonders if she's still sleeping.

Phillip woke her up, her mind tells her sometimes. True love's kiss and all that lovely stuff she was told about as a child. He woke her from that hell, that nether world that never ended, and brought her back to life. But he brought her back to a reality far crueller than the one she left.

Her prince dies, and takes her 'happily ever after' along with him, and she has to ask herself if she ever really woke. Is this the better life, the way things are meant to go? Is there a divine point to losses she stacks up? Or is she really still under that spell, finally switching to a new dream, a new nightmare.

Then, sometimes, she convinces herself that this is real, and not so bad as it seems. Everyone she knew is gone, but she forges a new family, beneath the stars and between the trees, catching her cloak on all the annoying branches, and marching until her feet hurt, and stealing Emma's jacket when she gets cold. They fight sometimes, about stupid things, because they don't always communicate so well, and they're all from different worlds, and sometimes she doesn't really understand what's going on in the world around her – but neither does Emma, and in fact she might be worse off. But she likes her dysfunctional little family nonetheless – Snow, who mothers her in the smallest ways, and Emma, chivalrous despite her estrangement, and Mulan. Mulan who always watches out for her, always goes for her hand first. Her oldest friend in the new world, however short that's been. Her protector.

She wants to go with them, wherever they're going. Somewhere with more people and more hope than this war-torn world she used to know. She wants to meet the people Emma and Snow talk about, learn about showers and coffee and grilled cheese. She wants to see Emma in the world she hails from, and Snow reunited with her husband, and Mulan relieved of the burdens she carries. Aurora wants to go.

But then Cora takes her, and Hook lets her go, and when she comes back she does not come back the same.

She is empty, and out of control. She says things she doesn't think of, and can't say the things that she does. She can't move her limbs on command. She can't live. She is a passenger in her own body, and she doesn't know how it works but she knows that it's happened. And she watches, when Emma watches her, and Snow makes her plans, and Mulan follows her head rather than her heart entirely, or maybe that's the other way around. Her bones are a prison. She watches her days play out, but they are not her own.

The family she has forged falls apart.

She cries, somewhere inside, when Mulan takes her away from the camp, from their sleeping friends, because she knows the truth. She _needs_ Mulan, but Cora doesn't. The old witch will be fine with the warrior out of the way. And Aurora longs for the warmth of Emma's jacket, the smoke of the campfire, the sound of Snow's breathing close by. What she would give to snag her cloak on a branch again, to hear Mulan's exasperation. To fall asleep to that burning room, because even that was preferable to this.

She sees the dagger in her hand, but doesn't feel it – hears it sliding between the faults in Mulan's armour but doesn't remember directing it there. Somewhere away from here, Cora revels, and in her joy, gives Aurora a fraction of a second to take back control. Not long enough to fix what's been broken. Hardly enough to whisper.

"I'm so sorry."

Aurora often wonders if she's still sleeping. It doesn't really matter. She's traded one hell for another, either which way.


End file.
